When I received a document with comments, they are gibberish.

[Guest]

--
Ron

 

[Guest]

--
Ron


: This is the first time I have submited a question, so I may be
doing this incorrectly, as it appears my question was truncated. Here's my
problem: when I send a document to someone for editing and they insert
comments, when I open the document (upon receiving their edits), the comments
are all gibberish -- almost like ASCI. I have received documents for more
than one person, so I am convinced that the problem is my computer. Any help
would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

What version of Word and OS?

How are you opening the document? For instance, something that produces
gibberish is to use File | Open with the dialog set to Recover Text From
Any File (although that is not related to comments).

When you say gibberish, can you explain more specifically what you mean?
Is is just the comments that have gone crazy, or the whole document?
What do the comments look like?

How are you viewing the Comments? In the comment pane, in balloons in
the right margin, etc?

 

[Guest]

I am using Word 2003; Windows XP.

I have tried opening the document directly from the email and I have also
tried saving it on, then opening it -- it doesn't matter.

Just the comments are gibberish -- the author's intials, which he inputs
prior to his comments are ok. then the gibberish is primarily a series of
squares and squiggly signs.

I am viewing them in the margin.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Okay, that clarifies the situation--much better. I still don't know the
answer, but someone coming along might be able to figure it out now.

My wild guess would be that this is a font issue--what happens if you
randomly select some text in a comment and cycle through a few font
changes? try Arial Unicode and Times New Roman first, and I would
experiment on a COPY of the doc. Can you get it showing something
readable? Is it possible that the comments are using a non-Latin
alphabet or font that you don't have on your machine? Are they from a
multi-lingual user?

My other wild guess would be that this a screendraw issue caused by the
balloons--what happens if you choose Show Reviewing Pane on the
Reviewing toolbar? Does that get you readable comments?

And hey, wild guess #3--it could be corruption. Try round-tripping it
through HTML as described here:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm